Re: [xml-dev] XMLisms and HTML parsing and modes

On 17/12/2010 00:23, Liam R E Quin wrote:
> So it was in HTML at least as far back as 1995.
>

> It was probably done so that attribute values didn't need to
> be quoted as long as they parsed as SGML tokens, but had the
> consequence of enabling a whole bunch of other <i/features/



with the html4 sgml declaration <br/> parses as <br>> so it should cause 
a linebreak then typeset a >, and <div/> similarly parses as <div>> so 
should typeset a > at the start of the div.

But as you indicate, typical browsers didn't implement / as specified.
html5 specifies what they did, more or less.

David